Reply To: Exercise 6: 10 People Closer to Your Field
Method Initiative Exercise 6 – 10 People Closer to the Problem – Take 2
1. A list of the advice from ten people relevant to your project.
2. An improved version of the project based on that advice.
3. A list of any referrals to people who could help.
4. Your reflections on the experience.
Problem:
Environmentally conscious adults who want to minimize their belongings are feeling overwhelmed.
Solution:
Help willing and open people to become aware of the root of their issue – inventory inflow. Begin reducing overwhelm by digging deeper into what may cause their emotional attachments to bring awareness to the physical way it is manifesting. After pausing or minimizing inventory inflow, help them to connect with resources for sustainably reducing their inventory.
1. List of Advice
Advice 1 – Do a quick google search on why people keep lots of stuff
Advice 2 – Figure out how you have conversations in a way that people don’t feel attacked or that what they’re doing is wrong
Advice 3 – Explore the idea of doing it in a group
Advice 4 – Have more conversations with people close to me. Do you feel you have too much stuff? Why? Emotional connections? Be cautious pushing people to go deeper than the coffee table conversation without being too pushy or too nosy. Approach conversations with a positive and curious manner and demeanor.
Advice 5 – Consider watching “I Will Teach You to Be Rich” – The host digs into their money psychology. He digs it out in a way that is really non confrontational. He sounds like a therapist the way that he talks to people.
Advice 6 – Get at the roots. Dive into trauma-informed care. Understand the principles. It’s a universal approach – all humans have experienced some form of trauma – even the most minor things can be impactful over a lifetime. Explore: Traumainformedoregon – TIO – Explore the principles of trauma-informed program development or trauma-informed care – human centered/person centered around helping people think about this stuff.
Advice 7 – Consider connecting with people who do things in a similar vein. Behavioral health clinics have social workers called behavioral health consultants who craft specified action plans around the goals of the patients.
Advice 8 – Understand – What is a person-centered goal? What sort of support would someone need to reduce those items? In a practical setting – said individual’s clinics serves folks who primarily live in under-resourced housing and have too many things and need to reduce their items to keep their housing. With the houseless population – it’s also a problem. The problem can stem from scarcity, connection, unaddressed mental health.
Advice 9 – There is power in groups. Consider using the power of shared experience to hold people accountable. Collaborate in a group and/or think together.
Advice 10 – Email relevant people a summary of context and interest to connect so that it can be forwarded along to others
Advice 11 – Make resources known and accessible. Behavioral health consultants refer folks to community resources that exist out there. Make it accessible to have people know their things would go to a good place.
Advice 12 – Start small. Make goals attainable. People are going to do much better at reaching their goals if they are attainable and if they had a say in what those goals are. Give people options of what it could look like. Use a side-by-side approach. I.e. She sees patients making good improvement in their desired health status via care planning/self-management goals. Be mindful of behavioral components of making anything happen.
Advice 13 – Normalize community support. Increase access to sustainable communities. Explore the idea of community resiliency. Provide a framework for how to start.
Advice 14 – Step back to explore why people think they have an issue with overwhelm. Explore individual reasons why.
Advice 15 – See if you can create a group where people responding to the group are people – make the group comfortable and familiar rather than just people like-minded with similar problem.
Advice 16 – How do I identify people who are experiencing this issue? Is there a gender component? Explore the possibility of starting working with particular genders. Demographics, age, income levels, stage of life, family dynamics, kids, people in the household. Older people mid-age, kids are growing up, etc. who are starting to feel the problem more.
Advice 17 – Make different categories for items – sentimental, ‘just in case’, c—i.e. categorize by strength of attachment. Similar to time management – Start with lowest attachment items. Ignore the highest attachment items.
Advice 18 – Pick a place to start. Some people might feel more comfortable starting in a kitchen or living room rather than a bedroom.
Advice 19 – Frame things in questions rather than telling people what to do. Figure out what’s their motivation for wanting to declutter. Ask about things in a future timeframes as a way to think about in the present. Gauge their attachment. If they won’t get rid of it in 10 years, then getting rid of it now.
Advice 20 – Advertise in churches or spiritual centers or daily bulletin. The elderly probably tend to have more stuff accumulated
Advice 21 – How to be non-confrontational – Work on loving people, caring about them, etc. Do you want to clear out your house? Why do you want to do this? How motivated are you to get this cleared out 1-5? Is there a specific incident that is making you think about this now? If you haven’t aceted on this yet, why not? If you’re trying to do this now, why now?
2. Revised Project
The Problem: Environmentally conscious adults who want to minimize their belongings are feeling overwhelmed.
The 3s Solution: Help willing people to gain agency in reducing overwhelm with a structured framework.
The Solution Framework: Find willing and motivated people via an intake assessment. Provide a familiarized group environment for people to uncover and share the root cause of their unique emotional attachments to physical belongings, as well as their motivation for taking action. Inspire action by engaging people in crafting a personalized SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goal. Connect people with a body double (someone to get things done alongside) or accountability buddy. Equip folks with resources for sustainably reducing their inventory via donations, the buy-nothing project, recycling, and ultimately by gaining an awareness for and making a commitment to reduce inventory inflow.
3. List of Referrals – no immediate connections, thoughts for connections
– community organizer that deals with civic engagement
– behavioral health consultant
– professional organizers
– other people who experience the problem
4. Reflection:
Despite a second week of following up – I’m still not quite at 10 – I’m at 6-7, 6 documented, 7th not included in the follow up. Not only would a high volume of reaching out be necessary to do 10 in one go, starting super early would be useful for allowing referrals to be simmered on and followed up on. I almost feel like people should keep in mind all the exercises and start as early as possible with the scheduling so that the timing of the 10 can take place all in one week, if that was the intention.
This week I finally iterated on the solution, and actually got to change, refine, and expound on it.
An interesting thought on changing topics vs. completing this project. What’s interesting is that in thinking of switching topics, there are a few resonating ideas. One is to lean into the passion work I’m about to pursue more. The other is to teach initiative. On the idea of whether to complete the project or not, one of my major decision-making factors was the question of – if you didn’t get paid for this, would you still pursue it? I also have already participated in supporting people in some fashion without getting paid, and hence find value in pursuing it. Note, I’m not conflicted about whether or not to switch topics, but rather, have found clarity in other areas in which I’d like to pursue additional iterations of method initiative.
• Is your understanding of the seven principles changing? If so, how?
1. Personality matters less than skills you can learn. – This principle is made clear in asking questions, observing outcomes, and strategizing how to get closer to desired outcomes, whether it’s better or more tailored advice, to referrals, to connection, or something else.
2. The idea of a lifetime comes once a month. – I can see how developing initiative skills could allow someone to take it through its entirety in faster iterations if someone were wholeheartedly pursuing it.
3. Better than a great idea is an okay idea plus market feedback, flexibility, and iterations. – This one was interesting for me. Iterations felt like ‘completing the exercises to the letter’ initially, but then I entirely missed the ‘change’ and ‘flexibility’ components. This exercise, I’ve been doing better with flexibility and iterations.
4. Start where you are with what you have. – Every lesson will take as long as it will take for someone to learn. What someone might learn another might already have mastered, and vice versa. The process of taking actions uncovers valuable information on knowing oneself and continuing to understand oneself.
5. Pitch and they’ll judge. Ask advice and they’ll help. – People were mostly willing. Some felt lost and unable to give advice. It allowed for space to have a dialogue and to ask questions to receive tailored pieces of feedback. This seemed like unraveling a ball of yarn depending on who I connected with.
6. The problem leads to the solution. – People shared what helped them get through a similar problem or what they believed would need to be successful at solving the problem.
7. Almost nothing inspires like helping others so much that they reward you for it. – Recently I helped a lady I randomly met helping someone move/unpack to start clearing out her kitchen for 2 hours. By the end, she gained agency for where things should go, gave herself permission to let go, and started to be okay with the idea of trying new configurations out. She recently circled back with me to say thank you and bought me a coffee. I got the chance to hang out with her and get to know her a bit better. 😊
• How did you feel about the exercise before starting? Were you anxious, excited, confused?
I felt less compulsive about the completion of the exercise and wanted to be more intentional with the people I was meeting and iterating/fleshing out the solution/problem. I was a little overwhelmed with needing to follow up with so many people to get to 10 (still working on it), but ultimately felt less stressed because I had gained a little more clarity on my ability to iterate.
• How did your feelings change as you did the exercise? –
I initially sought people out in one specific field as a follow up from a previous exercise and didn’t gain much traction. I even got random advice from someone that took my ask to connect with people in the wrong direction. As I met people and got ideas for other fields and put out feelers for more fields, I got more responses and traction with people who were willing to help. It seemed to open up a few more possibilities. The more possibilities and angles I could see, the more I felt abundance.
• How did you feel during the conversations? How did the other people seem to feel?
During the conversations I felt grateful and inquisitive. Others seemed to feel uncertain as to where to start to give me feedback. This allowed for me to ask questions and ask for advice in specific categories for suggestion and get the conversation flowing. Others seemed to feel enthusiastic by the end or at least happy to help. Some people even suggested grabbing coffee and furthering the relationships.
• Did you get advice beyond your expectations? Did you learn from the conversations?
I definitely learned a lot about what might be obvious to some and not others. I also learned that there ought to be a filtering process to figure out who to work with so as to spend time on those who are most likely to take action. This could be done via an intake assessment. A very interesting idea for quality control.
• Do you feel your understanding of the problem and the quality of the solution improved?
Yep
• Do you think the people you talked to are interested in learning how the project evolves?
Some are interested, some are not.
• How would you characterize the conversations—boring, fun, exciting?
The conversations were informative. I enjoyed getting to learn more about how to reach people in an approachable way and in a way that seems transferrable to other areas of life or other fields. It was a mix of exciting and boring, it kind of depended on the enthusiasm of the individual and the quality and thoughtfulness of the feedback.